The Road to Hell
by RabidMiacid
Summary: It started with an honest mistake, one that she was determined to make right on, no matter the cost. They say the road to Hell is paved with good intentions. Mikaela , unfortunately, seems to be full of them.
1. Good Intentions

A/N - take place in the same continuity as Running with Scissors. Not really RoTF compliant, but may have some elements later. I don't own Transformers, which you should probably realize by this point.

* * *

Mikaela cleaned her tools meticulously and with a single minded focus. It was a ritual in it's own right, something her father had taught her. There were many fond memories of father and daughter bonding over the kitchen table, tools and cleaning clothes puled between them. Now that she was older, it had become her outlet, a way to unwind once the stress built up too high. It was something she could pour all of her energy into, and forget about everything else.

If she spent enough time at it, maybe she would be too tired to cry.

The stinging in her eyes told her that was false hope.

She had fucked up big time, and it was eating away at her. It wasn't just enough that she and Sam were apparently not as compatible as they had hoped – apparently, in complete indifference to every movie they had ever watched, meeting alien robots, uncovering a secret government organization, almost dying, and saving world from said alien robots was not a solid foundation for a lasting relation ship. No, she had gone and pissed off her friend and mentor as well. It was an honest mistake, but it was one that had harmed a friend. Of course, Ironhide had insisted he would be fine, no harm done, she had simply knocked a sensor wire out of place, once it realigned he'd be good as new, but Miakela couldn't help but feel guilty. A simple slip, and the weapons specialist had lost all all sensation in his hand.

Almost lovingly, she began to place wrenches back in their old leather case, folding it carefully.

She felt horrible.

And she couldn't shake the look of disappointment on Ratchet's face. It was burned into her mind.

Ratchet hadn't gone so far as to ban her from the medbay, but she couldn't help but feel that if she hadn't been human, he would have. He'd apologized for snapping at her later, but he hadn't invited her back to help with anyone's check-ups either.

The old tools now spotless and neatly packed in their box, she ran a hand over the old steel with a smile. They didn't make tools like they used to. She'd never buy a new set. Not with the way newer ones were made, all cheap alloys and plastic. No, they just didn't hold up, no matter how much you paid. Her fathers tools had been bought 30 years ago, and had more than stood the test of time. Good old American steel, no 'made in China' stamps here. She carefully placed the aged toolbox in a gym bag and slung it over her shoulder.

Mikaela was going to make sure that if she ever got another chance to work in that medbay, she would never make another mistake. Ever.

Of course, that meant getting some practice on her own.

She knew just the place.


	2. Better Than a Kick in the Teeth

He came back online slowly, almost cautiously, fully expecting to offline again immediately once his pain receptors booted up. When, after a good minute, they did not he inwardly frowned and began booting up his self diagnostics.

No response. Odd. He tried again.

Nothing.

Worried, he ran a systems check. Neural sensors, weapons, diagnostics, and transformation sequence were all offline. Optical relays were functioning well below capacity. Vocal processor barely functional, no doubt shot from screaming. At least his audio receptors seemed to be intact and functional. Hesitantly, he booted them up, slightly afraid of what he would find.

Surprisingly, it was not the electrical hum of lab equipment, nor the chatter of human scientists or Autobot captors he heard. Rather, it was a single, quiet human voice – female unless he missed his guess – muttering to itself and the occasional metallic clink of what might have been...tools? He turned his audio relay up, straining to hear her words.

"Still can't believe I'm doing this. If anyone finds out I'm so boned. What the hell is that? Shit. I hope it's not vital. It's not like I can ask Ratchet what it is or how to fix it. What was I thinking? Shit shit shit."

Despite himself, he chuckled, and was rewarded with more swearing and a loud clatter of tools.

"Oh my god. Are..are you awake?"

He remained silent.

"I heard you, 'Con. Don't bother trying to pretend you're still conked out."

"And yet you still found -_shhhk_- fit to ask," his voice was far more strained and full of static than he had expected, and not at all as threatening as he had hoped. Slowly, he onlined his optics, greeted with a blurry, pixelated image of a thin human female covered with sweat, grease and what he suspected was energon. His energon. Slag it all.

"I wasn't actually sure," she admitted sheepishly, reaching for the tools she had dropped. "Been a couple of noises here and there, I thought it might have been another automated response."

Another?

"How long -_shhhk_- you been here?" he winced inwardly as his voice clipped, suddenly thankful that his pain sensors were all offline.

"I've been working on you for about two weeks."

It was said so matter-of-factly, he couldn't think of a response. Instead he tried to initiate his self repair sequences without much success. A human was working on him, one who was clearly friends with the Autobots, and he was essentially helpless. His comms weren't even working. Fantastic. He tried to think of a way out of this, couldn't, swore inwardly, tried to boot his repairs again, swore some more and finally gave up and began thinking of any way he could possibly retain at least some dignity.

"You're lucky, you know."

What? He was functionally crippled, and there was a human crawling all over him. Her hands were inside of his leg for Primus' sake!

"You slid into this gorge and were hidden by the rocks and that overhang. I'm still amazed they didn't find you. You'd be at the bottom of the ocean with your buddies if they had. If I hadn't ridden by at just the right time, I wouldn't have found you either, actually."

Oh. "Explain."

"You're in just the right spot that you are completely hidden from the highway or the desert, but you are in just the right spot for the sun to glint off one of your door wings for about 10 minutes a day. Granted, it was lying in your debris trail a few feet away, a bit more in the open...I picked up everything I could find and brought it over here, by the way," she added as an afterthought. "Just in case anyone decided to renew the search."

"How kind of you."

"You're welcome. Now that you're awake, maybe you can help me out. I couldn't exactly smuggle any diagnostic tools out of Ratchet's lab, and I don't know if there's anything that I'm missing as far as wiring or relays go, I have not point of reference-"

"Your Autobot friends do not know you're doing this?"

"What do you think."

Point taken. This human certainly had innards, or whatever the saying was. She was also aggravatingly comfortable with working on him. He frowned and tried to move the claw closest to her, only succeeding in a slight twitch and a horrible grinding sound in his arm.

"I wouldn't do that If I were you," she warned, looking up at him. "First of all, I'm pretty sure that's a bunch of your neural wiring in that pile over there. Secondly, the main energon line in your arm was shredded, and even though I patched it the best that I could, but if you move your arm it'll probably tear on that big chunk of scrap paneling that used to be your shoulder," he glanced at his shoulder unhappily. "Thirdly, if you squish me, you're pretty much screwed. It's not like anyone else is going to come help you, all you're friends are gone, and I highly doubt that you'll be going anywhere anytime soon."

She stood and placed her hands on her hips, smirking in an irritatingly smug way.

"And you've decided -_shhhk_- go against your friends why?" He scowled to the best of his ability, which, judging by the way her smile widened and she raised an eyebrow, was not at all. "I doubt -_shhhk_- out of the goodness of your heart."

She shifted, almost uncomfortably, but recovered quickly and grinned in a way that could have been considered downright evil.

"You get to be my test subject," she actually climbed onto his arm, onto his chest plating and got right into his face. The nerve! "You see, I need someone to practice on so that I can help my friends if any of your buddies decide to show up and start something. Fortunately, none of them are in need of anything more than routine maintenance. Lucky for me, I happened to know where a large pile of scrap was that, until recently, was sitting right at death's door." she leaned in. "That would be you. Now," she tapped him on the face with her wrench and he twitched, more out of indignation that shock. "I'm feeling charitable enough that I'm going to give the full work over to the best of my abilities with the materials I have. And, if you're nice enough and behave yourself, I just might even get you mobile again, and let you limp away to some dark cave and wallow in the fact that you are a wanted mech and are all alone. Be grateful. If you have display other notions of squishing me, or otherwise maiming me, I'm gonna turn your pain sensors back on and leave you here for the Autobots or Sector 7 to find, and I promise you, they will not be as nice as me."

He bit back a growl as she kicked open a panel in his chest and began fiddling with something uncomfortably close to his spark chamber.

"Alright human-"

"Mikaela."

"Alright..Mikaela," this time he did growl. "I suppose -_shhhk_- want something in return?"

"Past no death or bodily harm? I'd like it if you told me how I was doing, let me know if wired anything wrong, missed something, any tips on field repairs, that sort of thing. My specialty is cars, not giant alien robots. I'm still new at this medic thing."

She stood up and looked him in the optics again, chewing on her lip thoughtfully. She seemed lost in thought for a moment.

"And, like I said, if you're good, I'll see about getting you mobile again. It might be tricky, so don't get your hopes up – the strut in your leg is basically shattered, and most of your hip is caved in, but I might be able to replace the strut with one from a car. It won't be much, but it might be enough to let you hobble out of here. But again, that's only if you're really good, and you promise not to go round up your buddies later."

"I doubt I'll -_shhhk_- doing anything of the sort. My 'friends' as you call them do not take kindly -_shhhk_- cripples. Not much help in battle."

She smiled warmly, although her shoulders slumped visibly.

"So we have an agreement then? No squishing?"

"...No squishing."

"Perfect. Alright umm..." she looked at him expectantly. When he didn't respond right away she sighed. "I don't want to refer to you as 'scary cop car that tried to kill my boyfriend', so..."

"Barricade."

"Barricade. Ok. I know you can't feel much right now, and trust me, you don't want to, but so far is everything else relaying correctly? I replaced most the burnt out wires I could find, but like I said, not really an electronics person."

"Can't -_shhhk_- diagnostics."

She frowned and crawled onto his shoulder and dipped out of sight for a moment.

"Whoops. Didn't solder it well enough. Sec. I'll tape it for now, I know you guys hate it, but I'm out of fuel. Try now," she hopped back onto his chest plates.

He did, stifling his surprise when it did in fact boot up, and began rattling things off to her, watching her nod attentively. It pained him to admit it – and he certainly wouldn't do so out loud – but she was right. He was not going anywhere, and he desperately needed the repairs - if the feeds from his spark were any indication he had come extremely close to offlining permanently, and he certainly remembered the pain. His spark was stable, despite his distinct recollection of being able to see it through a hole in his chest as he tumbled off the highway. She seemed to have done a passable job so far, hopefully she would continue to do so. Perhaps if she could repair his leg, he could make it far enough that he could send a transmission without it being intercepted, and call someone to get him off the dirtball reject of a planet. The battle had clearly not gone in their favor, and he'd rather not stick around. It wasn't that he wasn't loyal to the cause, but his self preservation overrode any 'ideal' that Megatron had attempted to drill into his processors.

Speaking of which...

"Megatron?"

"Wha? Oh, he's at the bottom of the ocean with the rest. You guys got your asses kicked big time. You and that little guy were never found though. Oh, and that jet got away, but I hear that's not really surprising."

"...No."

He sighed. So Starscream had bailed. He wondered if he would come back with his trine, or if he would just go back to...what ever it was that he and his trine did. It wasn't as if the Air Commander had ever bothered to concealed his hatred of Megatron or the way things had been run. He had practically preached how the Decpeticons had lost sight of their original goals and abandoned their home in search of their misguided leader. Certainly he would take Megatron's death as his own personal victory and leave things at that.

Though there was the Allapark to deal with....

Barricade glanced at the girl, who was now perched on his shoulder, attempting to hammer out the dented plating and push it back into place. Perhaps he should wait to ask that particular question. He didn't want to press his luck, and her body language denoted that she had plenty on her mind besides repairing him. Something was clearly bothering her, and he suspected it was deeper than just the whole 'going behind the Autobots backs and repairing him' thing.

No one was that altruistic, not even the damned Autobot medic or Prime himself. She was hiding something, and he'd be slagged if he didn't think she had some ulterior motive.

No. He had learned long ago to never accept something at face value. Despite her threats, she was being kind to the enemy, and that alone merited investigation.


	3. Summer Homework

A/N - So you're just going to play along and ignore the dates up there, alright?

* * *

The summer sun was relentless, beating down on her back and reflecting off the metal she was crouched over. The air was horridly still, not even a light breeze to alleviate the heat. It would have been a fantastic day to hit the lake and lounge by the water like a normal person. Instead, Mikaela was having a mostly one-sided conversation and marveling at the fact that her welding torch actually seemed to be putting off less heat than the air around her.

"Did you frag up this arm before? Because there is a ton of warped metal in here and it doesn't look new."

Red optics just stared down at her.

"Ok, fine don't answer. It's not like it's important for me to know or anything, I'm just trying to repair the support frame and get the joint back into alignment."

The hand next to her twitched slightly. Mikaela jumped, dropping the torch into the forearm and almost falling in herself. She met the red optics and glared as she pulled the torch out by the cord.

"I bet you thought that was hilarious."

"Actually, that was unintentional. You hit a connector. But yes, you falling would have been entertaining."

"You, sir, are a giant metal douchebag."

Barricade raised an optic ridge.

"So, you gonna help me on this one or not?"

"Is the old injury interfering with the repairs?"

"Well, not really but-"

"Then, no."

Not for the first time, Mikaela wondered if she should take a page out of Ratchet's book and start chucking wrenches. Sighing, she turned back to the limb in front of her and frowned. The sensory and motor wiring passed through a space between the inner supports themselves, or at least they should have. Instead they had twisted around a displaced piece of metal in the joint and were snagged on one of several odd looking struts welded midway through the forearm, and while she was pretty sure she could free the wires from it, she was also pretty sure they would just snag again. And, of course, she had no idea if she could smooth down that strut or if it was important in some way.

Barricade not helping was...not helping. She really shouldn't have been surprised by this, but he occasionally actually _did_ help and she was finding herself relying on it more than she should have. It was incredibly frustrating – one day he would gladly read off error logs and hold panels for her, sometimes even giving her pointers on field patches; the next, he'd be slinging insults or stubbornly refusing to acknowledge her presence, even as she was dangling by a tangle or wires off his chassis.

She wanted to scream. She settled for ranting.

"How I spent my summer vacation, by Mikaela Banes. Instead of socializing with other human beings, I decided it might be fun to spend three months stealing from junkyards and welding an ungrateful pile of scrap back together, all while being splattered with unidentifiable, probably radioactive fluids and having insults flung at me," she mumbled, kicking a particularly stubborn panel into place. "Also, I got a cat. I named her mittens because I was too busy playing alien mechanic to come up with something better and she looks like she's wearing mittens."

"...It has not been three months...has it?"

She looked up, huffing as a strand of hair fell in her eyes. She hastily wound her hair back into its messy bun and huffed again.

"No. But at this rate, it'll be December before you're even able to crawl," she glared as he slowly blinked his three functional optics and looked away. "Unless, of course, you'd like to contribute more to your own repairs."

Barricade cycled his vents slowly in a deep shuddering impression of a sigh and gazed blankly at the horizon.

"That arm was...snapped vorns ago. Those struts no longer serve any function past guiding the chain for my flail. As you are not repairing my weapons, they are not important."

Mikaela stared at him for a moment, then patted his arm.

"See tough guy, that wasn't so hard," she crouched back down, carefully running a hand over the strut that had the wires snagged on it. "So these have always been here? What purpose did they serve before? I mean, if they're normal for this arm then there was to be away for your wires to not catch on them."

"Yes, irrelevant, and the last time I looked inside that arm, it was not attached to me, so I don't know. This...December...it is three months from now? Or from when you found me?"

"December is the last month in the year buddy. We've got six months before then."

"It will take that long? Or is that a normal increment of time for-"

"-Just forget I said it. You keep helping, stop going all moody on me, and we'll have you limping away well before then. Just remember – no squishing," she glanced back up, watching his expression closely. There was something...off about it, just as there had been something off about his tone when he talked about his arm. He seemed sad, almost. Or maybe he was just upset at the thought of his repairs taking longer. Or depressed about being helped by a human. Or maybe she was over analyzing it and that was just the way his face looked when he wasn't about to smash something. Either way, it was gone now, and Barricade was back to looking thoroughly bored with the whole situation.

"Right," he murmured. "No squishing the medic."

She grinned at him. He grinned back.

"No matter how disgustingly fleshy or bad at it's job it is," he added.

This time, Mikaela did throw the wrench.


End file.
